How the Mind Works"A model of scientific writing: erudite, witty, and clear." —New York Review of Books In this Pulitzer Prize finalist and national bestseller, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. What makes us rational—and why are we so often irrational? How do we see in three dimensions? What makes us happy, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sexually aroused? Why do we fall in love? And how do we grapple with the imponderables of morality, religion, and consciousness? How the Mind Works synthesizes the most satisfying explanations of our mental life from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and other fields to explain what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and contemplate the mysteries of life. This edition of Pinker's bold and buoyant classic is updated with a new foreword by the author. |
From inside the book
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... answered queries and offered profitable suggestions, including Robert Boyd, Donald Brown, Napoleon Chagnon, Martin Daly, Richard Dawkins, Robert Hadley, James Hillenbrand, Don Hoffman, Kelly Olguin Jaakola, Timothy Ketelaar, Robert ...
... answer to Pygmalion's prayers; Pinocchio was vivified by the Blue Fairy. Modern versions of the Golem archetype appear in some of the less fanciful stories of science. All of human psychology is said to be explained by a single ...
... answer is Isaac Asimov's Fundamental Rules of Robotics, “the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot's positronic brain.” 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2 ...
... answer will do. If he hated the sight of his grandmother, or if he knew the route had changed, his body would not be on that bus. For millennia this has been a paradox. Entities like “wanting to visit one's grandmother” and 24 HOW THE ...
... answer. Neuroscientists like to point out that all parts of the cerebral cortex look pretty much alike—not only the different parts of the human brain, but the brains of different animals. One could draw the conclusion that all mental ...